Ex-Central Bank Head Warns About Tech’s Influence on Finance

Zhou Xiaochuan, former governor of the People's Bank of China. Photo: Caixin

Editor’s note: The development of financial technologies such as digital currency and electronic payments has been spearheaded mainly by China’s privately owned technology giants. The rapid rise of these companies in the financial industry has posed an unprecedented challenge to the traditional financial industry, as well as to regulators, who have struggled to calibrate their oversight of these new developments. For example, Ant Financial, the online payment affiliate of Jack Ma’s Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd., serves more customers than some of China’s largest banks. It also operates the world’s largest money market fund, which has nearly 2 trillion yuan ($288.5 billion) in total assets under management.